Introduced within the framework of CDM 2010, the exhibition is conceived as a wondrous journey into contemporary object-scapes through the creative processes of a young generation of 30 Chinese independent designers, artists and studios as a way to explore both formally and conceptually the micro-fields of everyday life. This curatorial approach wishes to expose the multiple outreaches of design processes and research into a variety of crossdisciplinary practices and how these speak of a perception of the world and contemporary life, stretched into a continuous experimentation with its visual and material currency. The works and projects featured in the exhibition – ranging from products, furniture and lights to clothing, publication/illustration, sound and art objects, intend to inform of the shaping relationships between visual strategies in art, architecture and design and their implication with material processes of production that take the realm of the ‘ordinary’ as an ideal environment to continuously reinvent the cultural outfit of personal history into a process of performative innovation. The show highlights how these selected creative practices engage forms via strategies of subtle sabotage, appropriation, assemblage, where found shapes, materials and objects of everyday use are remoulded into a geography of whimsical ambiguity and disarming über-reality.
A selected series of books, artists’ catalogues and independent publications by Chinese graphic designers and studios are included as part of the exhibition.